This invention is in the field of devices for aerating liquids, and the particular field of bait buckets for containing water and live bait with means for adding oxygen to the water by bubbling air upward through the water.
As is well known, fish in the water of aquarium tanks as well as live bait in the water of bait buckets, consume the oxygen in the water, and this oxygen must be replenished or the fish and bait will die. Where oxygenation does not occur naturally, as from underwater plant life, the standard procedure is to introduce air at or near the bottom of the water container, forcing this air to bubble up through the water, with resulting oxygenation.
With aquariums and with live-bait buckets, one well-known method of aeration is to provide an electric motor-driven or manually driven air pump for providing a flow of air into the bottom of a container of water; this air then forms into bubbles and rises through the water, and finally it escapes from the water surface to the atmosphere.
The present invention is directed particularly to a live-bait bucket, where the aeration means must be portable and should be simple, reliable, and convenient. In the prior art there are numerous devices which provide aeration but all have features which render them inconvenient, unreliable and/or expensive, as will be summarized briefly. Bait buckets with electric motor-driven air pumps require either connection to a current source which is inconvenient or impossible, or batteries which have limited power, are heavy and must be replaced periodically. Hand-driven air pumps are obviously a nuisance to the user who will often be too busy or will forget to operate such a pump. A compressed air tank constitutes an additional and heavy piece of equipment, and requires valves and ducts. Also, there are bellows systems, i.e., collapsible air spaces, whereby force upon the extended bellows or the weight of the water-filled bait bucket upon the extended bellows, collapses the bellows thereby forcing air from the bellows into and through the water in the bucket.
All of these prior art devices require specific structures having one or more undesirable features, of being bulky, expensive, complex, heavy, unreliable, and requiring frequent attention to provide adequate aeration. As disclosed herein, I have discovered a new invention which is structurally very simple and inexpensive, and provides automatic aeration for a long time period while requiring essentially no attention.